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Jan 2, 2008

NXTlog Sumo Events

Last weekend, several of us got together to run the NXTlog Sumo contest. I'm pleased to say it went very well: from more than 100 entries we reviewed and selected until we had almost 30 that we felt were worth building, and then built them, downloaded the users programs, & ran them in a double-elimination event at Steve Hassenplug's house. The results were impressive - on the whole, the field of entries did far better than I had originally hoped, and there were a lot of exciting match-ups during the day. Well, NXTlog has announced the winners here in their special events section. I'll try to post more of my thoughts and details on this event here or on NXTlog over the next few days, but for now, take a look at the results on the NXTlog page, and if you entered this, (or even if you didn't), please let us know what you think.

Congratulations to everybody who participated, & very heartfelt thanks to all who helped with the event in question - we had outstanding support from LEGO, NXTlog, and several individuals, both on the day of and prior to the event itself.

The winning robot at the end of the day was "MG_Sumo", which used a unique wedge made of free-pivoting upside-down backhoe scoops (pictured above). There were a lot of other good designs, with blades & scoops tending to dominate the field. Staying on the ring itself was a trick with many robots (it always is), but a really surprising number of builders seemed to have cracked this first hurdle (trust me, many don't).

Agreed. I remember reviewing Shunts-R-Me as well, and thought it was a good entry, it just didn't quite make the cut. Note that there is a lot of luck even with a well-designed & well-documented robot.

That was a great contest idea and I really hope there is more challenges like that. I never got around to entering a robot, but it did inspire me to build a sumo ring in my room. Well it's actually a big LEGO tray with walls that I slide under my bed, and what I did was turn it upside down and put tape around the edges so now that my best friend has a (a or an?)NXT, We have competitions whenever we get a chance.

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